1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a fire detection and smoke detection method and system, and more specifically, to a fire detection and smoke detection method and system based on image processing.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Fire has caused countless casualties and damages to our society in the past decades. For years many efforts have been made trying to avoid such great and unpredictable damages with various fire detection technologies or fire prevention devices. Most of the fire detection technologies are base on particle sampling, temperature sampling, relative humidity sampling, air transparency testing, smoke analysis, in addition to the traditional ultraviolet and infrared fire detectors. However, fire detection systems using any of these technologies have so many limitations that the performance of effective fire detection is rarely satisfactory. As some of the systems are limited in applying in only some specific places, for example, the smoke sampling isn't suitable for a kitchen, others are limited in application because of the distance of the fire or the scale of the fire, for example, the detection device using temperature sampling technology can only be activated when the fire has caused a significant increase in the temperature detected by the detection device. Even some are too expensive therefore can only be utilized in important places. These fire detection devices using the above technologies either must be set in the proximity of a fire or can't provide the additional information about the process of burning, such as fire location, size, growing rate, and so on. Thus, they are not always reliable because energy emission of non-fire or byproducts of combustion, which can be yielded in other ways, may be detected by misadventure. This usually results in false alarms. To provide more reliable information about fires, the visual-based approach is becoming more and more interesting.
The prior art fire detection and smoke detection based on image processing uses images detected by an infrared camera. With smoke detection, fire expansion detection, HSI image analysis, and disorder analysis of fire, the prior art fire detection extracts the fire and validates the fire. However, the prior art fire detection method usually results in high false alarms and can't provide an early detection of a fire.